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When Pilots Become Passengers

During my first-ever opportunity to lead a formation of two T-37 jet trainers as a solo pilot, my wingman, also a student pilot, failed the ride. I asked the instructor why the other lieutenant ...

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Discuss this Article 33

3-thoughts.
1. Learning from those that have written their story in blood is always a compelling, memorable lesson.
2. Anytime a pilot flying (PF) does the unexpected, the pilot monitoring (PM) turns into a passenger.
3. Thank you James for the reminders and the accident dates!

Amen! Having been out of the cockpit for so long until recently, I've had a great former miitary instructor remind me of that a couple of times, while getting too involved with some new systems I have never flown. Back to Basics. Fly the plane. first, last, and always.

An excellent article connecting disparate crashes to a common theme. Respectfully, though, the Eastern 401 crash isn't related to UAL 173 as an airport proximity/fuel situation but rather as a distraction problem. The conclusion after the UAL 173 summary certainly applies to Avianca 52. However, as noted, it took only six minutes for Eastern to lose the altitude, and all three engines were working perfectly. The much higher percentage of fatalities was in part due to post-crash fire. Ironically, the saving grace for UAL and Avianca was lack of post-crash flammable material (fuel), a big reason for their much higher survival ratios. Another UAL flight (albeit with a happier ending) would be a better match for Eastern. In the mid-'90s, that B-747-400 departed SFO at night off Runway 28 and immediately lost an engine. With all four pilots in the cockpit concerned with the engine, nobody focused on the actual cause for 3-engine climb performance being well below book value. That resulted from a failure to use rudder and ailerons to compensate for asymmetric thrust. Like the many examples above, the first rule was given short shrift. They missed hitting Mt. San Bruno by less than 500', with some reports suggesting 200' as the margin of safety.

When I was an ab-initio flying instructor in the Royal Air Force our philosophy was to teach trainee pilots to "FLY" the aeroplane right up to the limits imposed by the flight envelope. Only when they could do this consistently time after time were they awarded their wings. As far as we were concerned handling skills were paramount and it was only after they were skilled aeroplane handlers did we start teaching them procedures. Current pilot training for civil pilots now concentrates on flying procedures and there is much less emphasis on handling skills. Add to that the fact that the training is carried out in low performance aeroplanes and why are we surprised that there have been a number of accidents, Air France 447, where the pilots have failed to take the correct action in the the event of it all "turning to worms". I recently flew an A320 first officer in my Beagle Pup, pulled up to about 70 degrees nose up, rolled on 90 degrees of bank, pulled into a stall, recovered and bought the aeroplane back to level flight. I then repeated the exercise but with 90 degrees of bank on I gave control to my airline pilot friend and asked to pull into the stall, recover and get back to level flight. He froze! I took control recovered back to level flight. When I asked him why he did not take control and carry out the stall and recovery he simply stated that he was completely confused and didn't know what to to do. Later in the bar over a pint of beer he said that in his training, at a top civilian flying school, he rarely ever went over 20 degrees of bank, had done a 45 degree bank turn with an instructor on two or three occasions and had been shown a 60 degree banked turn once but never allowed to practice them. With the low amount of hand flying that airline pilots now get why are we surprised that they are sometimes having difficulty in coping with, to them, abnormal situations. Probably the best known example of superb airmanship and ability to save a potential disaster was Sully Sullenberger's landing in the Hudson River. But look at his background, USAF fighter pilot who flew one of the least forgiving fighter aeroplanes of all time, the F4 Phantom. He took control and flew the aeroplane. If we are going to avoid accidents in the future I believe we have got to get back to teaching student pilots how to FLY aeroplanes rather than how to carry out procedures using flight management systems.

The Royal Air Force has not moved away from it's philosophical view of pilot training, "Teach the student pilot to handle the aeroplane to the highest level of skill, them teach procedures". Still works.

Yep, TXCOMT, they do. Newly qualified RAF pilots are on probation, and can lose their wings, for up to 6 months into their first assignments. The RAF had a brief period in the mid 1960's where an Air Marshall decided that the most important thing was not flying ability but that that pilots should have "Officer Qualities and be Good Chaps". This led to, unfortunately, a small number of pilots being given their wings who did not reach the accepted level of flying skills. After a couple of this group of pilots were killed in flying accidents the policy was quietly dropped and flying skills again became the criterion for graduating as a pilot. This is the way it is today.

Great article. It reminds me of my own experience as a young Air Force Lieutenant flying the T-37 in pilot training. My class was learning instruments and IFR procedures. Inside the flight room, one of our instructors was playing the role of ATC and was "vectoring" the students (we were walking around the room answering radio calls and showing our gear and flap configuration with our arms). However, he vectored me out of the flight room door and started me down the hall. I dutifully complied. Several of my fellow classmates who were not participating in the excersize followed me into the hall in amusement. As I approached the building exit, the instructor shouted down the hall "Lt! Who's flying your jet?" I responded "I am". To which he responded "Bullsh!t. ATC is flying your jet.

I used that example as a teaching moment many times over the next 20 years of my Air Force flying career.

"A robot took my job!" will soon be the cry of the airplane jockeys. Well, welcome to the club. No matter what you say, the writing is on the wall. Your days are numbered, as are those of all of us. The human is the weak link now. Time to face truth and accept the inevitable with good grace. You ain't the white knights anymore.

I really liked the article!! And I think jgarbuz is wrong. I've been flying since 1966, and I've been teaching "electric jets" for the last 11 years. And I've noticed a couple of things: human pilots do still make mistakes, but with good training and concentration will recover from those mistakes. Electronic gadgets make mistakes, too. But they NEVER recover without trained, HUMAN intervention!

This is a great article dealing with a subject that is "near and dear" to my heart: a pilot must always concentrate on flying the airplane first, and, if necessary wrest control from computerized flight control systems. A perfect example is of the Asiana B-777 which, on a bright sunny day, was flown into the seawall while attempting a landing at San Francisco International Airport. Not only were the pilots (3) concentrating almost exclusively on the computerized flight control systems, they apparently weren't even looking out the bloody window! We should all hope that the next time we fly commercial, we have at least one PILOT up front, and not just a pair of stiffs monitoring the computers.

Too high a percentage of recent mishaps have resulted from pilots being passengers, over-trusting the automation to a point of complacency. Many of these occurred when the automation ran out of ideas and turned the airplane over to the dazed and confused pilots who had no clue which way was up, much less how to get the airplane right side up. I suggest every airline start their own flying clubs with complex, fast, high performance airplanes, and every pilot must complete 5-10 hours of actual hands-on flying per month. With a focus on VFR operations, aerobatics, unusual attitude recovery, and emergency procedures maybe we would soon have a cadre of real pilots able to handle real-life flying. Preventing one hull-loss would pay for it.

mgringer, I agree with you wholeheartedly. There is a growing problem due to the lack of piloting skills of a large number of current airline pilots operating fly-by-wire aeroplanes. This is exacerbated by the fact that the computer systems are now actually flying the aeroplane for up to 99% of the flight. There is also some research evidence that shows that simply monitoring the computer system leads to the brain effectively switching off and going into what is essentially a sleep mode. This applies to power station operators, train drivers and ships officers as much as to airline pilots and is one of the key reasons why people monitoring safety critical computer systems seem to have great difficulty in making an appropriate response when it all "turns to worms". (Air France 447)

bizwise, you got it in one. The great thing about learning to be a glider pilot is that you have to fly the aeroplane 100% of the time. You also have to develop that essential skill of having the situational awareness needed to ensure that you can land safely from your current position. You have to get the landing right first time, there is no fallback position.

In my humble opinion the current training regime for commercial pilots fails to instil those key elements of judgement and airmanship that are so important when "it all turns to worms". When the FMS goes bananas it is only "stick and rudder" skills + "aviate, navigate & communicate" airmanship that is going to guarantee the continuation of your membership of the human race.

Excellent article. Many years ago I instructed in T-38s for foreign military and then training future instructors. These guys were good. And the one thing they were drilled every day as surprises and issues were thrown at them: aviate, navigate, communicate. The order never changes. Fly the Airplane First.

The UAL DC-8 inbound for PDX sounds remarkably similar to a description of an incident given during training by United Air Lines Safety Personnel at SFO years ago. Except in their version, the pilot put it down on Burnside Blvd., everyone walked off and no one died. Guess it was too good to be true (NTSB reported it differently).

Been there and done that... in Air Force pilot flight training I 'dead sticked' a T-bird when I thought I had a turbine failure... glided to land 'on the numbers' at Greenville Air Force Base...it turned out to be a lack of fuel... in a 'rush' prior to takeoff paying attention to the instructor in the lead aircraft formation flight, I neglected to activate the switch to pressurize the wing tip tanks full of fuel... received 150 merits for doing a GREAT landing... but 5,000 demerits for 'heads up and locked'... it provided a powerful message... don't EVER let ANYONE pressure you into rushing flight procedures...amen, AMEN!

Flying formation in the T-37 and T-38 was a very challenging experience. I remember busting at least one formation ride! Going on to become an instructor in the KC-135, I remember telling more than one copilot "who's flying the plane, it or you?"